• Emma Sweeney & Friends @ The Mac, Belfast

    October 9, 2013 - By 

    Fast-rising musician Emma Sweeney and guests will perform a night of cutting edge Irish traditional music at Belfast’s MAC on Thursday, October 10. A finalist at the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award in 2003, Sweeney will perform music from her album Pangea, which was released early this year to critical acclaim. Despite her age, Sweeney she accumulated an impressive amount of live experience performing alongside a host of respected traditional musicians including Dick Gaughan, Cara Dillon, Mike McGoldrick and Dezi Donnelly. The performance is part of Not So Trad, a new series of MAC music events offering traditional music with a fresh, modern approach…

  • EP Stream: Skymas – Primer

    October 8, 2013 - By 

    Belfast-based electronic rock band Skymas have unveiled their two-track debut EP, Primer. Led by former Skint recording artist Martin Corrigan with Nick Todd on bass and Andrew Dunbar as operator, the trio “aim to build tracks that will affect both the body and brain”. The EP – featuring the tracks ‘This River’ and ‘Hey Porter’ – is the band’s first release on their own label, OBR. Live dates are soon to be announced. Stream the tracks via Soundcloud below.

  • Rhinoceros

    October 8, 2013 - By 

    Romanian Theatre of the Absurd dramatist Eugène Ionesco’s classic play Rhinoceros will be be staged at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre as part of this year’s Belfast Festival at Queens. Directed by Joanne Allen – an alumni of Queens University – the play centers on the inhabitants of an entire town, in which ‘Rhinoceritis’ has gradually transformed them all into rhinoceroses. All except one, that is, for Berenger remains untouched. In a world in which everyone becomes a rhinoceros and no-one speaks the same language, the question is asked: what is there to understand? The staging takes place from October 25-October 27. Tickets – priced at £12 – are available…

  • Stream: Hurdles – Control

    October 8, 2013 - By 

    Belfast indie-rock band Hurdles have released a stream of ‘Control’, the lead single to be taken from their forthcoming debut EP, Where To Start. With the four-piece set to launch the aforementioned four-track EP at Belfast’s Radar on Thursday night, it marks the band’s first single release since ‘Kaleidoscope’ six months ago. Check out our recent interview the band here and stream ‘Control’ via Bandcamp below!

  • Watch: Pixies – Andro Queen

    October 7, 2013 - By 

    Alt-rock demigods Pixies have unveiled the Ondi Timoner-directed video to the latest single, ‘Andro Queen’. Taken from the band’s recent EP-1, the single is the follow-up to ‘Indie Cindy’ – the band’s first single without Kim Deal – released last month. Pixies play Dublin’s Olympia theatre on November 18 and 19. Watch the video for ‘Andro Queen’ below.

  • Revisted: Our Krypton Son – Our Krypton Son

    October 5, 2013 - By 

    In the second installment of Revisited – a feature looking back at some of the finest Irish album and EP releases of the last few years – we return to the spectacular self-titled debut album by Derry singer-songwriter Chris McConaghy AKA Our Krypton Son. Released via Smalltown America Records in 2012, the album is an eleven-track masterstroke of supremely wistful songwriting veering between internalised romantic afterthoughts, extroverted folk-rock forays and some of the finest lyricism and compositional work from a songwriter to ever hail from these parts. A self-proclaimed album about “memory, time, love, death, work, jealousy – the usual shit…

  • Go Wolf to feature on Kitsuné compilation

    October 4, 2013 - By 

    Belfast band Go Wolf have announced that their forthcoming new single ‘Voices’ will feature on the fifteenth compilation by Kitsuné on October 21. According to a blog post on the label’s website, the track “expresses a freshening juvenile pop touch, which effortlessly hits the target. California’s dreaming without overdoing it.” Sounds about right to us, actually. Formed in 2002 by Gildas Loaëc, Masaya Kuroki and the London-based company Åbäke, Kitsuné is a French electronic music record label and fashion label. Go Wolf’s music-making peers in Two Door Cinema Club released their debut, Gold-selling album Tourist History via the label in 2010.…

  • Read: Sinead O’Connor’s open letter #2 to Miley Cyrus

    October 3, 2013 - By 

    As we reported early today (Thursday, October 4) Sinead O’Connor decided to post an open letter, offering advice to Miley Cyrus. You can check that out here. Now, after Cyrus mocked O’Connor’s concerned appeal, O’Connor has posted a second open letter. All we can say is: oh… dear. Read the letter below. “Miley… Really? Who the fuck is advising you? Because taking me on is even more fuckin’ stupid than behaving like a prostitute and calling it feminism. You have posted today tweets of mine which are two years old, which were posted by me when I was unwell and seeking…

  • Playlist: National Poetry Day

    October 3, 2013 - By 

    We’re humongous fans of poetry here at The Thin Air. As far as we’re concerned, the very best poetry is far superior to a very good song or album – the syllabic genius of a handful of rhyming conquistadors down the ages faring in a realm of incisive mastery that has little to no parallel in any other sphere of the arts. As it so happens, today is National Poetry Day and as we are also humongous fans of lovingly-assembled Spotify playlists of pretty much anything under the recordable sun, we have compiled a fifteen-track playlist of poetry (and music containing…

  • Arctic Tern – Leaves EP

    October 9, 2013 - By 

    Having released the extremely promising Paperboats EP last march and a double single at the tail-end of last year, Holywood-based folk singer-songwriter Chris Campbell has returned at an apt juncture in the year under a new music-making moniker: Arctic Tern. Having pertinently conjured darkest and coldest season in his nom de plume, the title of his new six-track EP directly references the decidedly Autumnal air and ponderous undercurrents woven throughout the release.  Beginning via lone and languidly strummed chords, opener ‘Love Is Not A Game’ gradually blossoms into as a wonderfully produced full-band effort with Campbell’s voice taking centre stage. Whilst contemplative and considered…